A couple points:

GURPS Vehicles is not a book that's going to bring in the masses. It's a niche product that hardcore GURPS fans of a certain type want, but (I bet that) SJG realizes that this is both a tough book to get written and an even tougher sell.

GURPS DF's existence is at least indirectly lampshaded by the fact that no sooner did this product complete than did SJG reacquire The Fantasy Trip, the product that SJG really wanted to do all along. The fact that GURPS DF continues to get Kickstarter love at all is amazing, because from my perspective SJG has been gonzo gung-ho all about reviving The Fantasy Trip and their eighties' era pocket box games. SJG is going down the nostalgia rabbit hole big time, and they are definitely diving into the deep end of the OSR pool, just in a corner not familiar to traditional D&D OSR fans.

GURPS will remain obscure and hard to sell to the current gaming crowd until or if SJG finds a way to make a 5th edition that slides back to the positional role that GURPS 3rd edition held for so long. (imo)

Quote from: sureshot;1078045At this point given how long they have been in the rpg business they should have a better idea of how to run their business and more importantly what to invest their money.

Running a (very) small business, I have learned: you don't have to be that smart, you just have to be not as dumb as most of the rest. As well, you need to be dedicated. In business as in so many other things in life, most people don't fail, they give up. In business, most people are really dumb, and most give up easily.

If you are dedicated and not quite as dumb as most of your competitors, you can make a living. Now, to be hugely successful takes something else.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1078063My issue with GURPS is that it's a toolkit not an RPG system. The GM has to put in a lot of effort to get the game going.

I like the idea of Dungeon Fantasy being an example build of GURPS as a system. I would prefer a cohesive book though...

Still you have the issue of players needing both DF and GURPS core to play. At least 3 books and GURPS doesn't have a D&D 3.X srd that my D&D 3.X groups found essential to run the game.

Oh and screw SJG for not providing the PDF with a physical book purchase. I don't want to buy your book twice and no one else does either.

For the current Kickstarter:

The $20 pledge level gets you the monsters 2 book and its PDF
The $95 pledge level gets you that, plus the DF box set its PDFs

(or did you mean just buying other books from SJ Games?)

I love GURPS, but I'm not a fan of the 250 point starting level, and am not enough of a fan of the dungeon crawling genre to buy the new book or reprint. Buying a dungeon fantasy book I don't want just so they might make more GURPS stuff doesn't seem like a good idea to me either, since that GURPS stuff will probably be more dungeon fantasy. If they put out more After the End content, I'll gladly fork over the money for at at least a PDF.

Quote from: Chocolate Sauce;1078080I got burned by palladium's robotech campaign years ago. Their complete non-action and outright protecting palladium pissed me off. Kickstarter doesn't do enough to keep project starters honest. not saying indiegogo is any better, but hey.

Makes sense to me.  If I ever get my finances to the point where I can ditch my current bank, I will.  Not because I think other banks are any better, but it's the one that pissed me off.

Quote from: sureshot;1078045Well when the company that created the product is showing to me at least that they are not really interested in trying to make more money with said product. It's on them when their product is not doing well.

At some point they started focusing only on making a profit, or at least breaking even. Apparently their margin is really small. A game has to sell enough copies to pay for the next product. Hence why they let popular games go fallow for a decade or more and only trot them out as an IP retainer. If even that. Thus the recent spate of reprints of classics.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1078063My issue with GURPS is that it's a toolkit not an RPG system. The GM has to put in a lot of effort to get the game going.

The term that used to be used was a game required a "master DM" to run it. EG: a DM who could take something like Gurps and prune the tree enough to get what they want. Even the basic game is a bit overwhelming for a novice DM.

Its kind of funny that Gurps in a way requires the DM to have some experience with other systems before being able to run Gurps. Either that or be able to grasp the nuances right out the gate. Welcome to the very deep end of the pool. Some learn to swim. Some dont.

Quote from: Chocolate Sauce;1078080I got burned by palladium's robotech campaign years ago. Their complete non-action and outright protecting palladium pissed me off. Kickstarter doesn't do enough to keep project starters honest. not saying indiegogo is any better, but hey.

They arent. A couple of years ago they allowed some shady games to get a pass as long as they got their cut. Dont know if that was a rare incident or not. But same can be said of Kickstarter. The vast majority of stuff is legit. But whoooeee the bad ones can sometimes sink to new lows.

And steer clear then of LanZanOs, an EU based crowdfunding platform. After the debacle of Heroscape 25th and their mis-handling of it even now.. Not a platform Id trust with my cash.

Just keep in mind folks, that SJ Games is one of the few surviving game companies from the early 80s that managed to keep a traditional corporate structure going with employees, salaries, offices, etc. Not many other companies outside of Paizo and Wizards can say this.

The most important aspect of this is that Steve Jackson will not crazy expand just because he has a hit on his hand. He has experienced enough near death incidents with his company that he tempers his reponse so SJ Games can survive the next downturn or even a major mistake like the drawn out fulfillment of Ogre.

Also note despite all of our complaints with GURPS, he never fully shut it down. The closest came during the crisis of the OGRE fulfillment and even then there was a trickle of PDF releases. Even with The Fantasy Trip getting attention, GURPS still has planned releases. I don't think SJ Games wants to see any of their games be not available and if they see a path forward they take it.

Doesn't mean criticism isn't warranted but to be effective it has to take in account the above. Which to me means opening GURPS (and TFT for that matter) even more to 3PP so that the RPGs get the variety of support and alternative presentation they need.

Quote from: Omega;1078158At some point they started focusing only on making a profit, or at least breaking even. Apparently their margin is really small. A game has to sell enough copies to pay for the next product. Hence why they let popular games go fallow for a decade or more and only trot them out as an IP retainer. If even that. Thus the recent spate of reprints of classics.

Not wrong with making a profit and as a company imo it should be the primary or at the very least secondary goal. I get why they went and focused on Munchkin. Yet at the same time they do the rpg equivalent of putting an rpg IP on cruise control and then wonder why the fans are not buying enough profitable they also bear the responsibility for the IP not being profitable. As well like Hero Games they also misjudged the extent that the fanbase desire crunch and complex rules. For years their was no real competition and the fans put up with the crunch and complexity. Along comes Savage worlds and Fate and it cut into their market share. I understand pleasing older fans yet Neither company  did nothing to try and reduce the complexity and crunchiness of their respective rpgs. Not rules light by any means yet somehow both companies seemed to think all it would take to get more new fans and older dissatisfied fans back to playing their rpgs was full colour and better production values. Which is always a nice touch yet it does nothing to really address the flaws of the rpg. With Fate and Savage worlds gamers were not having it and voted with their wallets.

About the complaint about Gurps and Hero system being too generic. I think that is missing the point completely. The point of a generic rpg is to allow one to play any rpg genre they want. Buying saying the Gurps core and then complaining that it's not a complete rpg like say the 5E core is on the buyer not say SJGames. Sorry that is the dumbest ever complaint about generic rpgs. "well I could have bought just the right tools for drilling and making holes in a door to attach it. I instead bought an all in one tool box and can't make heads or tails of it. It must be both the company who created the tool box and store who saold it to me fault that I can't figure it out". Do your fucking research as a buyer your expected a certain amount of responsibility and if you don't want to invest the work in building everything and anything in a rpg DON't buy a generic rpg.

Quote from: Chocolate Sauce;1078080I got burned by palladium's robotech campaign years ago. Their complete non-action and outright protecting palladium pissed me off.

Not defending Kickstarter yet a certain amount of how incompetently the project was handled is mainly Kevin Seimbeda fault. We are talking about a guy who released the first ever Rifts videogame on a platform almost no one really wanted. While ignoring any and all suggestions to the contrary. Made worse that he also signed a contract where said Rifts game cannot be translated to other platforms. Not a fan of Kickstarter nor of those who defend Kevin actions from the Kickstarter a certain amount of blame has to be placed on the owner as well.

Admittedly, one thing I love about GURPS is the rigorous and professional standard of quality.  I can understand why they wouldn't want just anyone selling any old thing under the brand name.  One only needs to look at the d20 glut to see the alternative.  What they've said is that they don't have the man-power to do quality control on third party materials.  Douglas Cole has earned their faith and that's impressive.

Quote from: estar;1078173Just keep in mind folks, that SJ Games is one of the few surviving game companies from the early 80s that managed to keep a traditional corporate structure going with employees, salaries, offices, etc. Not many other companies outside of Paizo and Wizards can say this.

Being in the business X amount of years does not make one immune to making mistakes as a business. Look at Palladium books with their string of failures.

Quote from: estar;1078173Also note despite all of our complaints with GURPS, he never fully shut it down. The closest came during the crisis of the OGRE fulfillment and even then there was a trickle of PDF releases. Even with The Fantasy Trip getting attention, GURPS still has planned releases. I don't think SJ Games wants to see any of their games be not available and if they see a path forward they take it.

Not really much in the way of releases if you go to their main site. Sure we have smaller PDFs yet nothing to me that shows that they are really going to make an effort releasing more Gurps. That being said I do not blame them at all because if what they say is true and Gurps is not profitable. It makes no business sense to keep investing in rpg line that is losing money.

Quote from: estar;1078173Doesn't mean criticism isn't warranted but to be effective it has to take in account the above. Which to me means opening GURPS (and TFT for that matter) even more to 3PP so that the RPGs get the variety of support and alternative presentation they need.

Right now the main stumbling block to 3pp is SJGames if they are unwilling to invest more in Gurps they should open it up. The problem then is when it will happen. This is not something that needs to be rushed into. Nor should it take five years time for them to do so. They have competition that is eating into their market share. It needs to be done sooner rather than later.

Quote from: sureshot;1078176About the complaint about Gurps and Hero system being too generic. I think that is missing the point completely. The point of a generic rpg is to allow one to play any rpg genre they want. Buying saying the Gurps core and then complaining that it's not a complete rpg like say the 5E core is on the buyer not say SJGames. Sorry that is the dumbest ever complaint about generic rpgs. "well I could have bought just the right tools for drilling and making holes in a door to attach it. I instead bought an all in one tool box and can't make heads or tails of it. It must be both the company who created the tool box and store who saold it to me fault that I can't figure it out". Do your fucking research as a buyer your expected a certain amount of responsibility and if you don't want to invest the work in building everything and anything in a rpg DON't buy a generic rpg.

That applies far less to the DF boxed set that to the main GURPS line. DF is set up to be a complete game for dungeon crawling fantasy in a manner similar to D&D. In my opinion, it fails to be exceptional within that niche, and I have several games I would rather play for dungeon crawling fantasy.

Quote from: Omega;1078159The term that used to be used was a game required a "master DM" to run it. EG: a DM who could take something like Gurps and prune the tree enough to get what they want. Even the basic game is a bit overwhelming for a novice DM.

Its kind of funny that Gurps in a way requires the DM to have some experience with other systems before being able to run Gurps. Either that or be able to grasp the nuances right out the gate. Welcome to the very deep end of the pool. Some learn to swim. Some dont.

I hate GMing systems I'll never play. If my fellow players could never be convinced to run the game, then I am most certainly not going to run it.

GURPS has that problem. Also has the problem that my players just didn't like the per second combat.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1078179That applies far less to the DF boxed set that to the main GURPS line. DF is set up to be a complete game for dungeon crawling fantasy in a manner similar to D&D. In my opinion, it fails to be exceptional within that niche, and I have several games I would rather play for dungeon crawling fantasy.

I can see why they did Dungeon Fantasy as imo the fantasy rpg genre was and is still one of the more popular one played at tables. Except the market for that is saturated and D&D has that market share locked down imo.